Healing Dragon
Steven Cardoza, M.Sc., L.Ac.
Acupuncture, Herbs, and Related Therapies
Providing natural, holistic solutions for all your health needs.
Chinese medicine has been effectively used for thousands of years throughout the world to treat virtually every medical condition treated by conventional Western medicine. Chinese medicine is holistic, looking at the whole person as a unique individual, not just as a collection of symptoms to be treated. On a physical level, it has its methodologies for observing and assessing the interconnections and interplay among all organs and body tissues, the way the health of one organ may influence the functioning of all the others and everything else in the body. It includes the influence of emotional, mental, psychological, and sometimes spiritual states, and the nature and quality of interpersonal relationships. Dietary and lifestyle factors are also taken into account.
In most cases health can be fully restored through Chinese and alternative medicine alone. You may elect to use it in combination with conventional Western medicine, and I will always recommend that option when I believe it's appropriate.
ACUPUNCTURE is the art and science of stimulating the body to improve function and promote natural healing by inserting very thin needles into precise points along energy channels or meridians, well-defined pathways throughout the body that transport qi, the energy of life. Qi nourishes all organs and body tissues, and is the functional energy of all life processes, physiological, emotional and mental.
When blocked, qi can congest in one part of the body, causing an excess, or it may become restricted and deficient in other areas. These disruptions create various patterns of disharmony, which cause the symptoms of disease. Acupuncture corrects those disharmonies, restoring balanced health naturally. Some adjunctive therapies that support the restoration of normal qi flow include cupping and moxibustion. Where qi flows freely, disease cannot exist.
CHINESE HERBAL MEDICINE is much older than acupuncture. With thousands of years of research and development, it’s a highly refined, elegant branch of Chinese medicine, central to its practice, and takes into account even more variables than are considered when employing acupuncture alone.
A Chinese herbalist creates a complex, balanced formula, or modifies or combines any of thousands of preexisting formulae, that takes the whole person into account, addressing the overt symptoms, secondary issues, underlying causes, and the constitutional make-up of the individual, based on a detailed diagnosis. This is a significantly different approach than is used by most Western herbalists. Prescribed this way, Chinese herbal medicine is very safe, very effective, and produces no side effects. A formula may be supplied as loose raw herbs (to be brewed into a decoction), pills, tablets, or powdered granules.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine have their unique strengths, and work together powerfully to restore or maintain optimal health. Although each can address the whole body, acupuncture’s focus is more on the functional, energetic, qi and yang aspects, while herbal medicine, also very good at addressing those same aspects, is better than acupuncture at addressing the structural, substance, blood/body fluids, Jing and yin aspects. This is because herbal medicine adds something tangible and substantive to the body. This can be most useful in building up a body after a debilitating illness or injury, increasing the production of blood and healthy body tissue, or in generating other body fluids that may be used to lubricate dry, arthritic joints, boost or balance hormone production, soften tight achy muscles, or strengthen and heal bones.
MEDICAL QIGONG is an energy healing modality in which a qigong doctor directs his own qi to manipulate the patient's qi in a way very similar to acupuncture, achieving similar therapeutic results. Frequently little or no physical contact is involved. In this way energetic balance is restored and physical, emotional, and mental healing occurs.
QIGONG DISTANCE HEALING is a remote transmission of qi that works regardless of physical distance, whether a patient is across town or across the world. You may be familiar with the power of prayer, a request for divine intervention to benefit yourself or someone else. You may know that in the realm of quantum physics, there is a subtle unifying connection of mutual influence between two objects that occurs instantaneously, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe. While distance healing is not exactly either of these things, they may give you some frame of reference as to how it works.
In medical qigong, whether performed in office or remotely, the physician influences the energy of the patient without the use of needles. The physician may use his own qi for this, or draw on qi from environmental or universal sources. Another aspect of medical qigong involves teaching the patient simple Chinese healing exercises, combined prescriptively to treat a wide range of health conditions. Most medical self care qigongs have, or can be modified to have, a specific purpose that targets a particular organ, illness, imbalance or disharmony.
ZERO BALANCING and CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY are very light touch energy-focused Western alternative therapies that access profound levels of being. Working at the interface between structure and energy, or on the core energy within the skeletal system, they bridge and unify the apparent divide among body, mind, and spirit. Craniosacral Therapy frees up restrictions within the sutures of the cranial bones and resets the rhythm of the craniosacral pump along the length of the spine, mediated by the flow of cerebrospinal fluid, and throughout the body. Zero Balancing additionally directly addresses energetic obstructions within soft tissue which often immediately resolve some pain conditions.
Because of the energetic depth of treatment, positive psychological and other perceptual shifts are common as emotional and mental energies rebalance. They promote general wellness, resolve many diseases, are very relaxing, and foster the awareness of inner peace.
TUINA is form of Chinese medical massage therapy, combining aspects of orthopedic bodywork, acupressure, paidagong (tapping and patting techniques), gentle traction, and other energetically-focused strategies. While tuina may have a superficial resemblance to a conventional spa-type of massage, it has many specific therapeutic variables and techniques, following exactly the same principles that underlie every other branch of Chinese medicine.
Depending on the patient's needs, I may combine elements of tuina, medical qigong, zero balancing and craniosacral therapy to most quickly resolve the condition and restore a balanced harmony within the patient.